South-america

Five years ago I set out at 3am for Heathrow airport to catch the early morning flight to Madrid. There I connected with a flight to Quito in Ecuador. The previous days and weeks had been fraught with worry about whether I was doing the right thing. Did I get the right vaccinations? Would I have enough money? Would I cope with all that travel? Was I coming back? What was I going to do with all my stuff?

Uyuni to Tupiza

La Paz to Potosi

Overlong reflection upon the past is one sure way to make yourself unhappy so I try to avoid it. Nevertheless it becomes unavoidable at this time of year, especially if, like me, you are somewhat prone to reflection.

Picking up where I left off at Machu Picchu, we headed down into Aguas Calientes (trans. “hot waters”) by coach and by the time we got there it was torrenting down with rain. So much for exploration. We waited out the downpour in a pizza place and deliberated over whether to buy souvenier snaps from the tour guides. Ironically for a town named after hot waters, it was bitterly cold. One of those places where the sound of running water follows you wherever you go, the best thing about it was the huge trains that ran down the middle of street - big clanking hulks pulling huge passenger trains.

In a tour full of highlights, Christmas week of 2013 was nonetheless one of the greatest weeks of my life. I may have moaned, groaned, and got completely soaked, but it was worth it to see Machu Picchu in the sunshine.

Arequipa and Cusco -- the two cities that are the subject of this post -- are probably the two cities in Peru that are most amenable to travellers (though Lima certainly has a lot to offer too). For me they should have been punctuated with a trip to Colca canyon, one of the deepest canyons in the world and twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, I got really sick on the second day in Arequipa as my attempts at keeping my tummy bug at bay finally failed. (Even so, I didn't actually seek any proper medical help till the second day in Cusco, I was pretty boneheaded about it.)

Next up was a piecemeal section of the trip that took in a varied set of sights and helped us get to know the new passengers who joined in Lima. On the first day we took a boat trip out to the Ballestas Islands, a nature reserve that is informally known as “the poor man’s galapagos”. Living there are penguins, sea birds, sea lions and seals. The speed boat out was a little wet and wild (and in fact the return trip was even wetter and wilder) so we all got soaked (twice) but the microclimate around the islands themselves was calm and warm, and we all got good value out of our cameras (if they still worked that is). We even saw a pelican get taken down by a sea-lion which was an interesting if not altogether pleasant display of nature red in tooth and claw. Also, who knew that guano was so valuable?!?

From Punta Sal we took a long driving down to Huanchaco, via a stop off at the Lord of Saipan museum. The lord of Saipan is a Moche mummy found dressed in all manner of gold and surrounded by artefacts and other sacrifices (including other humans and decapitated llamas). The tour took a while to get going (our guide was late) but the exhibition was so amazing (the pieces were painstakingly restored in Germany) that it was hugely enjoyable. The diorama at the end featuring moving animatronic waxworks of Moche people was extremely weird though.

After Cuenca we set off for the Peruvian border. One of the great advantages of having a UK passport in South America is that you don't need any visas. If you're Australian or Canadian it's a different story. Nevertheless we all got over the border with very little trouble (the third ever land border crossing of my life) apart from the bits where they seem to make you wait in a queue just for the sake of making you wait in a queue.

After Baños, we set off for Cuenca, which is a town in the south of Ecuador. Being a long drive, the journey was broken up with our first excursion to some inca ruins, a large complex at Ingapirca with a sun temple. It was built on an earlier site that dated back to about the 9th century and the Inca then conquered the area and built on top of it, as they tended to while their empire was expanding out from Peru to the south in the 11th and 12th centuries.

We left Misahualli for Baños via an hour in nearby Tena to get something for the truck fixed. After that the drive to Banos was pretty short - or at least it seemed that way as I alternated between dozing off, snapping the scenery and... well... dozing off some more. We arrived at a campsite about twenty minutes taxi ride from Banos and this was it, the thing I'd feared most about this trip: the camping. Fortunately, as an odd boy, I managed to secure my own tent - the gadget palace that you can see in my selfie! Getting the tent up was straightforward and all my assorted camping gear seemed to live up to requirements! It chucked it down with rain in the night, so it was good that the fly sheet did it's job too. It was great fun to lie there listening to the rain, nice and warm and dry. More importantly, I also managed to get some sleep.

I'm a bit behind in my posts about the trip and this post interrupts the sequence of events somewhat, just because I've not felt that well and that has dominated my thoughts about what to write. Basically for a week or two I've had varying degrees of bellyache and it's not been fun. Instead of feeling the gratitude and excitement I've felt since being here, I've spent a lot of time wanting to curl up in the corner and just be... well... somewhere else.

Otavalo

By the time this goes up, I will be at least a week in to my South American tour. I flew out to Ecuador last Thursday (the 21st) and ended up being awake for more than twenty four hours. My flight left London early and I had a three hour stopover in Madrid, then a twelve hour flight onward to Quito. My bag didn't leave Madrid though, so we were separated for about twenty four nerve-racking hours. Luckily, I'd packed a change of clothes and so I was still able to explore Quito with Lee and Miriam (fellow Tucan travellers) the next day without too much discomfort.